CV News Feed // According to Cardinal Robert Sarah, archbishop emeritus of Conakry, Guinea, the United States can be a place of “spiritual renewal” and growth for the Catholic Church.
He made the remarks in Washington, D.C., on June 13 during a talk titled “The Catholic Church’s Enduring Response to Contemporary Practical Atheism.” The California-based Napa Institute and the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., co-sponsored the sold-out lecture, which took place at Catholic University of America, which provided the venue.
Cardinal Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, said that during a visit to the United States she “found the United States to be a very important place for the world Church,” but noted that the country’s institutions, hospitals and universities were often “Catholic in name only.”
He also said that the only U.S. president who identifies as Catholic is “a cardinal. [Wilton] Gregory was recently described as a “cafeteria Catholic.”
And yet, while the U.S. church community is “lost on a macro level,” Cardinal Sarah said, “there is much to celebrate. [the Catholic community here in] “united states of america”
“The Catholic Church in the United States is very different from the Church in Europe,” he continued. “The faith in Europe is in decline, and somewhere[s]dead.”
He said many prelates in the West, including bishops and cardinals, are “paralyzed by the idea of standing against the world. They dream of being loved by the world. They have lost concern about being symbols of contradiction.”
Cardinal Sarah asserted that this compromise may be due to material abundance: poverty, he said, brings true freedom.
He said the contemporary church is being seduced by a “practical atheism,” which he defined as “a loss of meaning for the gospel and the centrality of Jesus Christ. The Bible has become a tool for secular ends, rather than a call to proselytize.”
While practical atheism is a growing problem in other parts of the Western world, Cardinal Sarah said, “in the United States, thank God, I do not find it widespread among bishops and priests.”
Cardinal Sarah also said there are dangers when practical atheism is applied to moral theology.
“How often do we hear from theologians, priests, religious, even some bishops or bishops’ conferences that moral theology needs to be adjusted to considerations that apply only to human beings,” he asked.
“There is an attempt to ignore, if not reject, the traditional approach to moral theology,” he continued, noting that the Church’s official documents define moral theology very well. “If you do that, everything becomes conditional and subjective. To welcome everyone means to ignore Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium.”
” [this] “They reject God completely but treat revelation as secondary, or at least on an equal footing with experience and modern science. This is how practical atheism works: it doesn’t deny God, but functions as if God isn’t central,” he continued.
Cardinal Sarah also warned against separating faith from tradition.
“According to practical atheism, tradition… does not bring freedom,” he said, “but it is through tradition that we come to know ourselves better. We are not isolated beings, unrelated to our past. Our past makes us who we are.”
He emphasized that salvation history is a prime example, saying, “Faith always goes back to Adam and Eve, the Old Testament, and ultimately to Jesus Christ and the Church that He founded.”
“This is who we are as Christians,” Cardinal Sarah said, later adding that Christians are “people who live within the scope of the purpose for which God created us, which has become more deeply recognized over the centuries but which remains always connected to the revelation of Christ, which is the same yesterday and today.”
Cardinal Sarah also noted that the criticism that there is effective atheism in the Church today is not new, saying that in 1958 then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger criticized European Christians for embracing paganism.
But what Ratzinger wrote in 1958 is clearer now, Cardinal Sarah said, warning against a lack of faith within the Church.
Cardinal Sarah said of the Synod: “At the Synod, A sense of faith” That is, faith.
“Just because someone identifies as Catholic doesn’t mean they’re Catholic or Piety“And there’s a big danger in assuming that every opinion is valid,” he said.
He warned against substituting opinion for faith, saying attempts to change dogma would lead to instability in the Church. He pointed out that the Synod’s prelate, Cardinal Jean-Claude Aurelich, had expressed an openness to the possibility of ordaining women priests, which goes against dogma.
Rejecting the dogma suggests that faith is defined by humans and not by God, Cardinal Sarah said. “This is unCatholic and is a source of great confusion that harms the Church and the faithful.”
“Thankfully, Pope Francis has made it clear that it is not possible to ordain women to the priesthood,” he said, “but when the World Synod encourages such considerations, confusion spreads around these issues. The example of Germany is well known and is important to remember.”
Cardinal Sarah concluded by saying that “the United States is not like Europe.”
“The faith here is young and maturing,” he continued, “and this youthful vigor is a gift to the Church, as we have seen in the equally young African Churches that have given heroic testimonies of faith after erroneous documents. Fiducia supplicants“And just as it saved the Church from serious error, so the Church here in the United States can be a witness to the rest of the world.”
“The cultural atheism that is sweeping the West does not need to sweep the church here in the United States,” he said. “You have good episcopal leadership, good young priests, a community with young, vibrant Catholic families. You must foster the growth of all of this, not just for the sake of your families, but for the sake of the global church.”
Cardinal Sarah said the work of both the Napa Institute and the Catholic Information Center is “vitally important” to the mission of promoting the growth of the Church in the United States and should be commended.
“America is a large and powerful country politically, economically and culturally,” he continued. “With that comes great responsibility. Imagine what America could become if it were home to an even more vibrant Catholic community. The faith in Europe is dying. The Church needs to draw vitality from places like Africa and America where the faith is not dead.”
“It may surprise some that America could be a place of spiritual renewal, but I believe it can,” Cardinal Sarah said, “and if Catholics in this country are going to be at odds with your culture, the Holy Spirit will do great things through you.”
